Week 4 @ Cognicity

That Was the Week That Was

That Was the Week That Was

The 4th week at Cognicity KnowNow saw us receive a number of visitors to our Level 24 office. Which amongst the many highlights led to a more developed cultural use case for the Docklands Museum. Plus we participated in a great product development workshop. More on that later in the blog. The challenge participants are embracing interoperability which is great news for the kn-i platform, the Cognicity Challenge and Canary Wharf. On a news note, David & I had a great discussion with our home city. Watch this space to see if kn-i will be landing in Portsmouth soon. Well by 2016 we hope!

From a challenge perspective we are a third of the way through. A great vibe is brewing on Level 24 as the teams settle into a pattern, helping each other out and starting to see how we will deliver a cool demo in 8 weeks! Check out the KnowNow Wall including our banner in the picture below. The second cohort starts on Monday. We the first cohort feel like veterans now the newbies are starting. Exciting times.

KnowNow Wall at Cognicity

Product Development

The 4th weeks workshop was all about Product Development. What is reassuring is that how we have developed kn-i is following the guidelines of the experts. I still have the original pencil drawings of how kn-i would look and operate. Along with the MVP approach from last week, this workshop got you focused on what was important to solve a problem quickly. Evolving through iterations, sketches and constant testing. With a couple of techniques thrown in to help you develop your product in this fashion. Blake and Graham from Zinc were superb.

Yet again one of the benefits of Cognicity is access to this hands on mentoring. In some respects it is difficult to put a figure on how valuable this is to a Cognicity participant. Each one of us is different, so some will gain more or less than others. From a KnowNow perspective the experience has been well worth the effort and will I am sure prove to be very valuable.

Visitors

A big thank you to our visitors during week 4. We were lucky enough to receive Mark, Sepi and Niraj. All really constructive and positive sessions. One in particular I would like to mention was the visit to KnowNow from Dr. Sepi Chakaveh representing SoFWiREeD. Sepi & I developed whilst having a quick tour of the Docklands Museum a new use case for kn-i. This is so we can develop a new kn-i service based on AdinAR which will show off the augmented reality capability to a tee.

Talking Head at the Docklands Museum

We discussed a number of use cases and can really bring great benefit to the museum For example we could bring the outside docks to life through the ages from when they started in 1802 through to their closure in 1980, all viewed through your smart device. As a starter though we hope to bring this bust to life (See left)! One of the side benefits of using this technology is the impact it could have on education and disability access too. Not forgetting that this service can be tailored to any language.

The aim is to showcase a number of kn-i benefits. Firstly, that it will meet one of the Cognicity challenge criteria, which is to make a difference and demo something that will bring people to Canary Wharf. This technology is that difference. The second aspect is to demonstrate the concept of accessible services which can be branded outside of kn-i. KnowNow wants kn-i to have its own marketplace of 3rd party app’s. We see this as a way of generating a great community of re-usable services, it encourages an open ecosystem and wider adoption. Plus, it will increase local GVA if your local team are creating local services for your local kn-i installation.

And Finally…

I will quickly touch upon other news. As a result of the Cognicity Challenge, KnowNow has been looking at Portsmouth and Southampton and working with both city teams to enable kn-i on the south coast. In Southampton the focus is on the high street and improving economic re-generation. For Portsmouth it is all about multi-modal hubs having an improved traveller experience through the hub and increased share of the economic benefits available from these travellers to the city. KnowNow will be developing these concepts over the summer. As the story progress’ we will of course keep you updated.

Chris is the CTO of KnowNow Information. Passion is finding an easy and joined up way of fixing a problem. Ensuring that users have the best possible experience, whilst making sure the engineering is secure, sustainable and resilient.